their feet, and bearded men squeaked, she
kissed her child; but that was all. And so she sat patient, and suckled
him in death's jaws; for why should he lose any joy she could give him;
moribundo? Ay, there I do believe, sat Antiquity among those mediaevals.
Sixteen hundred years had not tainted the old Roman blood in her veins;
and the instinct of a race she had perhaps scarce heard of taught her to
die with decent dignity.

A gigantic friar stood on the poop with feet apart, like the Colossus of
Rhodes, not so much defying, as ignoring, the peril that surrounded him.
He recited verses from the Canticles with a loud unwavering voice; and
invited the passengers to confess to him. Some did so on their knees,
and he heard them and laid his hands on them, and absolved them as if
he had been in a snug sacristy, instead of a perishing ship. Gerard got
nearer and nearer to him, by the instinct that takes the wavering to
the side of the impregnable. And in truth, the courage of heroes facing
fleshly odds might have paled by the side of that gigantic friar, and
his still more gigantic composure. Thus, even here, two were found who
maintained the dignity of our race: a woman, tender, yet heroic, and a
monk steeled by religion against mortal fears.

And now, the sail being gone, the sailors cut down the useless mast a
foot above the board, and it fell with its remaining hamper over the
ship's side. This seemed to relieve her a little.

But now the hull, no longer impelled by canvas, could not keep ahead of
the sea. It struck her again and again on the poop, and the tremendous
blows seemed given by a rocky mountain, not by a liquid.

The captain left the helm and came amidships pale as death. "Lighten
her," he cried. "Fling all overboard, or we shall founder ere we strike,
and lose the one little chance we have of life." While the sailors were
executing this order, the captain, pale himself, and surrounded by pale
faces that demanded to know their fate, was talking as unlike an English
skipper in like peril as can well be imagined. "Friends," said he, "last
night when all was fair, too fair, alas! there came a globe of fire
close to the ship. When a pair of them come it is good luck, and nought
can drown her that voyage. We mariners call these fiery globes Castor
and Pollux. But if Castor come without Pollux, or Pollux without Castor,
she is doomed. Therefore, like good Christians, prepare to die."

These words were received